“In a hasty effort to be on the right side of history, I fear this industry is neglecting the historically precedented and exceedingly unspoken costs of forcing this kind of assimilation to white institutional power in this country. Doors are swinging open and white institutional leaders are ushering tokenized theatremakers into their broken homes. And in exchange for closer proximity to once tightly held resources, in a cavalier and unblinking gesture, our white leaders have laid at their feet long legacies of institutional harm and oppression. Do with this what you will.” – HowlRound
Blog
The “Me Industrial Complex”
“On the internet, another name for confession is over-sharing, and it has become synonymous with how we use social media platforms. People can’t get a hold of me over text, but they can just read my tweets: it’s all there, every beat of my mental state.” – Sydney Review of Books
The Fantasy Of QAnon (But A Sick One)
“QAnon is a joke. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make its long game of postmodern chaos magick any less dangerous. This is the latest iteration of the lulz agenda, following from the Great Meme War of 2015–16—the alt-right deployment of Pepe the Frog to influence Trump’s election—and the leftist hacktivist Anonymous’s radical trolling operations circa 2008–12 (all offspring of 4chan).” – ArtForum
Why Should Art Need To Be “Relevant”?
“The common forebear of both “relevant” and “relieve” is the French relever, which meant, originally, to put back into an upright position, to raise again, a word that twisted through time, scattering meanings that our two modern words have apportioned between them: to ease pain or discomfort, to make stand out, to render prominent or distinct, to rise up or rebel, to rebuild, to reinvigorate, to make higher, to set free.” – Harper’s
Composer Osvaldo Golijov Was A Rising Star. Then Ten Years Of Silence
“I was really depressed,” Mr. Golijov, 59, said by phone recently, of his creative drought. “That is the shortest answer.” – The New York Times
Architecture Critic Wins Pennsylvania State Senate Seat
Nikil Saval — a Bernie Sanders–endorsed democratic socialist, former editor of the literary magazine n+1, New York Times contributor, author of Cubed: Secret History of the Workplace, and community organizer — is replacing Larry Farnese Jr. a Democrat who has been state senator since 2009. He is also the first Asian American to be elected to Pennsylvania’s senate. – Curbed
Using Found Language Is An Avant-Garde Literary Technique That’s Centuries Old
Tom Comitta: “Even though these forms have existed for over a millennium, few connections have been made between the many novels and short stories that either contain a significant amount of quotations or are made up entirely of them. Considering the wide reach of literary criticism, … it’s particularly surprising that we don’t have a detailed and complex understanding of this kind of fiction. In order to start building one, I’d like to detail some of the important works and trends and to offer a possible vocabulary with which to understand them.” – Literary Hub
Why Anxiety Is Essential To Our Wellbeing
“The most fundamental enquiry of all is into our selves; anxiety is the key to this sacred inner chamber, revealing which existential problematic – the ultimate concerns of death, meaning, isolation, freedom – we are most eager to resolve.” – Psyche
Photographers Play Key Role In Nigerian Protests Against Police Violence And Extortion
“Local artists are working tirelessly to keep the demonstrations in the headlines by producing indelible images that seek to combat misinformation and capture the unprecedented protest movement in real time.” – Artnet
How To Tell When Societies Are On The Verge Of Collapse
“Just as apocalyptic dystopias, with or without zombies, have become common fare on Netflix and in highbrow literature alike, societal collapse and its associated terms — “fragility” and “resilience,” “risk” and “sustainability” — have become the objects of extensive scholarly inquiry and infrastructure.” – The New York Times